random picks cw17-22

squeaky.ai: staging environment

Typically, multiple people use staging to validate their changes before release. This often leads to times when you can’t merge your code because someone else is testing code on staging, and they don’t want your changes to interfere with their validation.

fortelabs.com: the para method

A system that told you exactly where to put every piece of information in your life – every document, file, note, agenda, outline, and bit of research – and exactly where to find it when you needed it.

spectrum.ieee.org: centric AI

The great advances in deep learning over the past decade or so have been powered by ever-bigger models crunching ever-bigger amounts of data. Some people argue that that’s an unsustainable trajectory.

tyrrrz.me: unit-testing is overrated

Aggressively popularized “best practices” often have a tendency of manifesting cargo cults around them, enticing developers to apply design patterns or use specific approaches without giving them a much-needed second thought. In the context of automated testing, I find this prevalent when it comes to our industry’s unhealthy obsession with unit testing.

josephg.com: node-js

The fundamental problem with npm is that any package you install has full access to do whatever it wants on your computer.

empty.coffee: hide my e-mail

Hide My Email is a simple feature that creates randomly generated email addresses on-the-fly. Since the system-wide inclusion of the feature last fall, I’ve come to love it.

timharford.com: le corbusier

At least the cube farms had a money-saving logic. Many managerial attempts to control the office environment had no logic at all. In the early 1990s, Jay Chiat of the Chiat-Day advertising agency brought on star architects such as Gaetano Pesce and Frank Gehry to provide him with radical, fashionable office spaces over which the actual workers had no control.

knowablemagazine.org: noise pollution

Traffic noise has been flagged as a major physiological stressor, second to air pollution and on roughly equal footing with exposure to secondhand smoke and radon.